


matchbook memories of our childhood fame

by eneiryu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:40:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: “Laura," Marin says, as Laura goes to walk away. She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t say it sharply, or angrily, or really any particular way at all.And yet, Laura stops.
Relationships: Laura Hale/Marin Morrell
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	matchbook memories of our childhood fame

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, everyone. Fully inspired by [this](https://the-kellephant.tumblr.com/post/96210445223) tumblr post, though the OP's storyline for Laura and Marin is much happier than what I ended up writing. 
> 
> In that same vein, that tumblr post had four other pairings: Lydia/Allison, Cora/Erica, Kali/Jennifer, and Kira/Malia. I plan to write additional small stories for each (and one bonus pairing), because let's be honest: there just isn't enough f/f, wlw fic out there in the world. 
> 
> On that note! If you have f/f, wlw prompts to give me (either in TW, or hell, other fandoms, though I can't guarantee I follow them) let me know. I'd like to make this a recurring thing.

Laura steps up to the counter in Beacon Hill’s only cafe worthy of the name, already desperately missing New York City’s caustic approach to customer service, because the young teenager behind the counter is smiling cheerfully at her and she’s just not in the right headspace for that. “Yeah, hi,” she greets quickly, pretending she needs to check the menu board behind the kid’s face so that she can avoid eye contact. “Can I get a—”

“Large mocha with whip, and an extra shot of espresso,” someone interrupts smoothly, and steps up to Laura’s right shoulder. Laura twists her head sideways like she’s some kind of badly maintained _animatron,_ already _dreading_ what— _who_ —she’s going to see. “And I’ll take a medium dark roast.”

Marin Morrell barely turns her head to look back. Her lips, though: those quirk up at the corner, right where Laura can see.

“Sure!” The teenage cashier chirps. They start to rattle off the price, but Marin is already handing over her credit card. Laura can feel her teeth start to grind, and more than that: her fangs are prickling at her gums. _Fucking get a grip,_ she orders herself, and shoves the shift down as far as she possibly can.

Marin may have bought her coffee but it’ll take a hell of a lot more than that to buy Laura’s company, so Laura pivots on a booted heel and starts down the counter. That her arms are crossed tightly enough over her chest that she’s actually compressing her own breasts is another thing she decides to blame on this _shit_ town in this _shit_ state that she’s really come to hate. Nothing about this place—not even this crappy cafe, where Laura used to come to do her homework after school with a giggling gaggle of friends—remains unsullied in her memories.

 _All of this crap to burn and my family was the only thing to go up,_ Laura thinks, and the spike of shame at the petty thought is almost entirely buried underneath the way the grief long gone calcified—caked over the inside of Laura’s ribcage like spackle—aches. She stops at the section of counter where the baristas slide the finished drinks, and glares at nothing.

Of course, Marin is Marin. She walks her way easily over to where Laura is standing, no hurry or hitch to her steps, and comes to a stop just off Laura’s right shoulder once more. The position is _doubly_ insulting for reasons that she knows Marin is perfectly aware of. Laura takes a half-step to her left.

The barista calls Laura’s drink. She swipes it off the counter with a badly-mannered _thank you_ and immediately turns to leave. Marin sidesteps directly into her path. 

“Marin,” Laura warns.

Marin just leans smoothly around her, and retrieves the medium dark roast that the barista sets on the counter next. “Thank you,” she says, level and perfectly friendly and causing the young barista to blush furiously. Laura rolls her eyes and again tries to leave.

Marin lets her go this time, but follows. “I didn’t know you were coming to town.”

“I didn’t know I needed to get your permission,” Laura snipes back, dodging a gaggle of _current_ Beacon Hills High students who shoot her dirty looks and begin whispering barbed but ultimately meaningless insults to one another that Laura is nonetheless perfectly capable of hearing. 

Still, those same students straighten _right up_ and chirp, “Oh, hello, Ms. Morrell!” as Marin passes them. Marin greets them as politely—and, ultimately, as distantly—as she’d thanked the barista, and keeps right on tailing Laura.

Laura’s rental car is down the street because there hadn’t been any parking available closer to, which Laura had interpreted as another casual finger from the universe. She stalks that way—noting as she does that the pedestrians she passes are in a little more of a hurry to get of her way than usual, which means she’s probably bleeding off alpha authority without fully meaning to—with her coffee in one hand, her other hand starting to dig in her pockets for her keys.

“You still haven’t said what you’re doing here,” Marin calls from behind her, her voice barely more than a lilting rise.

“It still isn’t any of your business,” Laura calls back, and in her distraction she fumbles her keys. “ _Shit,_ ” she swears, and crouches down to get them.

A hand appears in her vision, settling over them before she can. “This town,” Marin counters, “is my business.”

It’s entirely possible Laura’s eyes are flaring red: she can’t tell if the burning there is imagined or not. She hooks the crappy key ring looped through the rental car’s key and slides it out from underneath Marin’s palm as she hisses, “My _family_ isn’t. Not anymore.”

But it’s as she’s straightening up—Marin still crouched low—that she catches her first _real_ whiff of Marin’s scent, free of the overwhelming scent of roasted coffee beans and too many humans crammed in too small a space, and her spine stiffens _right_ up. “Not to mention,” she snarls, barely keeping a hold on her fangs, “you’ve _clearly_ moved on.”

Marin doesn’t flinch, or falter, or do anything other than stare levelly back at Laura as she, too, rises. “I’m doing what I’ve always done. Maintaining the balance _._ ”

The scent of Marin’s new pack is clogging up Laura’s lungs like cigarette smoke. She literally has to stop herself from gagging, and in a moment of desperation—a moment of _weakness_ —she takes a large mouthful of the coffee that Marin had bought her solely to try and clear her mouth of the stench. Marin watches her silently. 

Laura coughs a little, and wipes at her mouth. It’s crass and inelegant and next to Marin and Marin’s poise it makes Laura look even more like some kind of backwoods hill person, and Laura is just abruptly done with the whole interaction. If she wanted to feel even more completely ill-equipped for the constant shitshow that is her life for the last six years, she’d call up Derek and get into an argument for the billionth time about anything from whose turn it is to do the dishes to Derek’s college choices to Laura’s reasons for coming here at all. _We still have responsibilities there!_ Laura had yelled at him right before she’d left, half-hysterical because stepping foot in Beacon Hills was the absolute _last_ thing she wanted to do, but. 

The last thing Derek had said to her—snarled over his shoulder as he slammed out of their shared apartment—had been _fuck our responsibilities,_ so: in keeping with the general theme.

Laura stares at Marin for a half-second longer, and then she shakes her head—furious _tears_ burning at the corners of her eyes, because this day hadn’t been humiliating enough already—and turns to walk away. She makes it exactly five feet before Marin says, “Laura.”

She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t say it sharply, or angrily, or really any particular way at all. 

And yet, Laura stops. Her fingers clench hard enough around the rental car’s key that she can feel the metal bend. 

_Fuck,_ she thinks, and closes her eyes.

Marin takes Laura to her office at the high school rather than her apartment or house or lair or _wherever_ she lives, because Marin is an emissary and deathly allergic to being anything other than mysterious and teeth-pullingly vague. Laura trails after _her_ this time, glancing around the hallways and unchangingly blue lockers and _hating_ everything she sees, because just being in the place dredges up a barrage of sense memories that Laura has to try and ignore. Over there is where she and Cora and Miles had huddled and gossiped and rolled their eyes at all of the clueless human students. Over there is where she’d cornered Amir Morcos, and later Nanette Dubois, for stolen kisses before the bell rang, Derek making exaggerated gagging noises down the hallway like he _couldn’t_ control his own ears and nose.

Over there is where the sheriff had pulled Laura and Derek aside to tell them that their entire family had been murdered.

It’s a Saturday, so the only students around are the overachievers, the athletes, and the theater kids, preparing for some performance or another and leading to random bursts of conversation and swelling orchestral soundtracks from down near the auditorium any time one of them opens the doors. Inside Marin’s office most of it is muted, but it’s not like the walls are soundproof. 

And, well. Laura’s an alpha now. Laura’s _been_ an alpha for a while now.

Marin sets her coffee down on her desk and then shrugs her coat off with a single, elegant roll of her shoulders. She gathers it up and hangs it on a hook screwed into the wall, and then turns and cocks an eyebrow expectantly at Laura. 

Laura keeps her coat very firmly _on,_ and sprawls petulantly back in one of the uncomfortable chairs in front of Marin’s desk. Marin watches her for a moment longer, and then turns away without a word. She slides smoothly into her seat behind her desk.

“Tell me,” she says, soft like a request. 

Even after all this time it still hooks into something in Laura’s guts, her hindbrain. Tears threaten to fill Laura’s eyes again but they’re not frustrated this time. _I can’t be here,_ Laura thinks, meaning the school and the town, but also _here,_ with Marin studying her like Marin was prepared to become the repository of all Laura’s secrets; some place safe where they could rest. 

Where the _surrendering_ of them could let _Laura_ rest. 

_You were supposed to be mine,_ Laura thinks, but it’s a stupid, petulant thought; the kind she hasn’t been permitted in six years. She shoves it aside.

She blows out an explosive breath, and rocks forward to set her coffee on the floor between her feet at the same time that she reaches into her pocket to pull out the copy of the police report that she’d folded and shoved inside it, and holds it out. Marin frowns, just a single delicate line carving itself between her impeccably shaped brows, and reaches out to take it. 

Her only reaction when she sees the picture of the deer with the spiral cut into its side is to breathe out, so low and so carefully that if Laura wasn’t who and what she is, it would have been entirely invisible. “I don’t know who made it,” Laura confesses hoarsely. “I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

She tells Marin about the insurance-adjuster-turned-bus-driver, the two felons; all the names on the list that she’d managed to put together. Adrian _Harris,_ that skulking piece of shit, smelling sour like ammonia in her nose as he’d huddled over his desk and drew her the picture of the pendant that Laura now hands Marin. 

“I’ve put all this _together,_ ” Laura explains, her fingers making knots out of her hair as she stares sightlessly down between her knees, “but I don’t know what any of it _means._ _Who_ would have left that?” She demands, gesturing towards the picture of the deer with its werewolf symbol of _revenge_ carved into its side. “Derek’s with me in New York, and Peter’s a _vegetable._ ”

Marin is still frowning thoughtfully down at the various pieces of information Laura had handed her, her eyes flicking back and forth. “One of your family’s allies?” She proposes.

“After six _years?_ ” Laura challenges incredulously. “Why wait so long?”

Marin shakes her head, a silent shorthand: _I don’t know._ She looks as calm and as poised as ever while Laura’s a fucking _disaster,_ chunks of hair pulled out of the messy ponytail she’d thrown it into and sweating in the jacket she really should have taken off, the sugar of the chocolate and whip cream from her coffee—the only part of that drink that can _affect_ her—making her jittery, one of her knees bouncing up and down. Her eyes feel gritty, probably because she’s slept like _shit_ since she first saw the news article documenting the strange animal death in Beacon Hills—that _fucking_ Google Alert she’d set up out of a reluctant sense of responsibility, that _goddamn_ spiral carved into that deer’s side—and she rubs at them, unsurprised when her fingers come away wet.

Marin sits back in her chair. “What do you plan to do?” She wonders.

Laura _stares_ at her. “What do I…?” She repeats incredulously. “I’m going to _figure out who left it._ ”

Marin bows her head slightly, an acknowledgement. She gathers up the different pieces of paper Laura had handed her, and stacks them. Laura doesn’t reach forward to take them when Marin offers them out. She searches Marin’s face.

“You could help me,” she says, low and quiet; hating herself because it’s also a little desperate.

“No,” Marin counters. “I can’t.” 

She stands, and comes around her desk with the stack of papers still in her hands so that she can stop directly in front of Laura’s knees, and hold them out more insistently. Laura stares up at her, aware that her expression is one of _pleading._

“The new pack you’re _advising,_ ” she says, that last word coming out more than a little bitter. “What if _they_ know some—”

“Laura,” Marin interrupts, firm.

“Marin, _please!_ ” Laura begs, firm in her own way; firmly at the end of her rope, with that end starting to fray. All Laura wants is to leave this place, and get back to Derek, who’s never managed to dig himself out from underneath the weight of what he’d unwittingly helped Kate Argent do, and who’s the only family that Laura has left that matters; Peter no more than an empty shell. Laura _knows_ this town holds nothing but ashes for her, for Derek. 

She _knows,_ just like she knows that that spiral carved into that deer’s side isn’t a message she can ignore. Not if she wants to protect both Derek and herself from whatever it means. 

“Please,” she repeats, more quietly. She’s so _tired_ of having to shoulder all of this alone.

“Laura,” Marin murmurs back, and it’s almost one-hundred percent wishful thinking, but Laura almost thinks that she sees something _pinched_ flash across Marin’s face. “I can’t. It’s not,” she claims, “my place.”

Laura feels her mouth drop open. “Not your _place?_ ” She repeats. 

She surges to her feet, forcing Marin back a step and very nearly pinning her back against her desk.

“Your _place_ was supposed to be with my family!” Laura shouts, and her eyes are red, red, red; she can tell. “It was supposed to be with—!”

 _Me,_ that sentence technically finishes. Laura just _barely_ manages to stop herself from saying it, and she has to do it by very nearly biting through her tongue. She snatches the stack of paper Marin is still holding from her, and whirls around, fully prepared to leave.

“ _Laura,_ ” Marin calls, and this time Laura isn’t imagining the break in her voice. She stops, her shoulders stiffening. 

She twists her head around to look back at Marin.

“I have to do,” Marin explains, her tone _drum_ tight, “what I have to do. But that doesn’t mean it’s what I _want—_ ”

Frustration has a specific smell; honesty, too. Laura’s always found it hard to explain—her human siblings wondering how she always _knew_ when someone was lying; when they were telling the truth—but she knows its scent. Laura stares back at Marin, who stares back at her, and then she whips around, the papers fluttering from her hands to scatter across the floor as she takes the few steps necessary to carry her back up to— _into_ —Marin, her hands rising to take Marin’s face between them as Laura presses her mouth to Marin’s in a hard, harsh kiss. Marin’s fingers wrap around Laura’s wrists, hard enough that if she were human she’d be carrying the bruises for _days._

Laura _moans._ Marin tastes like the dark roast she’d been drinking and underneath that like _herself,_ the sense-memory of it _blooming_ across Laura’s tongue as she strokes it against Marin’s own. She slides her hands back from Marin’s face to her hair, tangling in it and holding on as Laura kisses her more deeply; as she presses herself closer, bending Marin back over the edge of her desk. Marin’s hands drop to her waist, and pull her in more tightly.

Like this, Laura can feel Marin’s heart beating against her own. She can feel Marin’s breasts pressing up against hers, and Laura can’t help dropping a hand from Marin’s hair to her waist before _dragging_ it up her side, until it’s resting just on the edge of Marin’s ribcage. She pulls back to give herself room. Marin _arches_ her back to encourage her. 

Laura obliges, cupping Marin’s breast in one hand at the same time that she ducks low to press her face against Marin’s neck, and _inhale_. 

But then she _snarls,_ her instincts surging hot and furious, as she remembers how _wrong_ Marin smells, now. The scent of her new pack clings to her like a _film,_ coating the inside of Laura’s nose and throat and threatening to drop her fangs. 

Marin pulls her back with a hand clutched in the hair at the base of Laura’s skull, and kisses her again. She sweeps her tongue into Laura’s mouth, and she doesn’t taste like her new pack _here._ Laura whimpers, very nearly lupine-sounding, and kisses her harder. 

She forgets about her hand on Marin’s breast until Marin flattens her own palm over Laura’s, and squeezes. 

Marin’s blouse is cotton, and elegantly stylish, and _in the way._ Laura slides her hand out from underneath Marin’s and drops her other hand down, both of them starting to work on the buttons holding Marin’s blouse together until Laura can push it open, baring Marin’s chest to the air. She’s still wearing a bra but Laura doesn’t _care:_ she shoves the straps down Marin’s shoulders and hooks a finger into the middle of it, pulling it down so that Marin’s breasts spill out. 

“Laura,” Marin gasps, as Laura ducks her head immediately down to take Marin’s right nipple between her lips. One of Marin’s hands falls to the crown of Laura’s head, and _twists_ in the hair there.

Laura has to bite back a growl, the shift surging and slouching against her skin. Pressing up, wanting _out._ She flattens her tongue against Marin’s nipple and then swirls it once around before closing her teeth carefully around the stiffened peak instead. Marin cries out and her hips jerk. 

The scent of her _floods_ the office.

Laura has to bury her face in the valley between Marin’s breasts, gasping. “Marin,” she pleads, because she needs _that_ scent; the strength of it starting to overwhelm, _overcome,_ the wrongness of the other pack clinging to Marin’s skin. She reaches blindly back behind Marin to shove at the papers and pens and other items lining Marin’s desk, making room.

Marin groans, both of her hands rising to Laura’s hair to tangle there. To _hold_ Laura’s head against her chest as Laura drops her hands to the very edge of Marin’s tight pencil skirt, and starts dragging it up. Laura doesn’t stop until it’s passed Marin’s hips. She presses a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the skin between Marin’s breasts, and then drops to her knees at the same time that she hooks her fingers into Marin’s panties, and starts sliding them down Marin’s legs.

Marin waits until Laura’s fingers brush her ankles, and then she reaches back and gets herself braced on the desk, and pushes herself up, and onto the space that Laura had cleared. She spreads her legs when Laura drags her hands back _up_ the inside of them as Laura stands, encouraging them wider with gentle pressure as she goes. 

She tips her head up immediately into Laura’s kiss when Laura seeks out her lips, her mouth dropping open for Laura’s tongue. 

Her breath _hitches_ as Laura skates two fingers up the seam of her, gathering her wetness and swirling her fingertips briefly around Marin’s clit before skating them right back down. Laura pulls back to watch Marin’s face as she slowly, _slowly_ drives those two fingers inside of her.

Marin lets her head fall back on a low, aching moan, one of her hands on Laura’s shoulder and her other hand wrapped around the edge of the desk, her bare toes—she’d kicked off her elegant heels at some point—curling against the side. Laura presses her forehead against one of Marin’s temples, and starts to pump her fingers in and out.

But as good as it is—as _wet_ and _hot_ and _tight_ as Marin feels around her fingers, clenching and with her inner muscles rippling—it’s not enough. Laura pulls her fingers out—Marin gasping and blinking open her eyes to look down at Laura as she—and sets them, leaving wetness in shimmering streaks against Marin’s skin, against Marin’s inner thigh. She mirrors the position with her other hand on Marin’s other inner thigh, and goes to her knees.

She has to hold Marin’s legs open—Marin jolting and reflexively trying to close them—at the first brush of her tongue against Marin’s core. Marin moans but the sound of it is drowned out by Laura’s _own_ moan, by the _rushing_ in her ears as Marin’s taste—unadulterated, untouched by Marin’s new pack—fills her mouth. Laura presses forward harder, _burying_ her face between Marin’s legs and driving her tongue as deep as she can inside her. 

One of Marin’s hands clenches in her hair. Her hips start to rock against Laura’s face. “Laura,” she breathes. “ _Oh._ ”

Laura thrusts her tongue in and out, best she can. She brings over one hand—her shoulders now holding Marin’s legs wide—to spread Marin’s folds between two fingers, opening her up wider for Laura to drag her tongue up from the very edge of her to Marin’s clit, the tip of Laura’s nose getting wet along the way and _filling_ her lungs with Marin’s scent. She groans and leans forward, one arm wrapping around Marin’s waist to pull her closer, to the very edge of the desk, as she flattens her tongue against Marin’s clit and lets Marin _rock_ against it, Marin’s scent getting sweeter all the while.

“Laura,” Marin gasps, not long after. “Laura, I— _ah._ ”

And Laura knows what that means, so she snakes the hand she’d had around Marin’s waist around the front of Marin’s belly so that she can press her thumb _hard_ to Marin’s clit, her mouth dropping down to Marin’s opening so that she can _lick,_ so that she can thrust her tongue _deep,_ just as Marin starts to come. Laura moans as she feels Marin’s muscles flutter around her tongue and buries her face even harder between Marin’s legs, desperate to taste as much as she can. 

She lingers long enough, licking and sucking and stroking everywhere she can, that eventually Marin kicks a heel weakly against her shoulder. Laura pulls back, but only reluctantly, and she doesn’t go far: she rests her forehead against Marin’s inner thigh, still taking in deep, _dragging_ gasps of Marin’s scent.

But then Marin’s hand tangled in her hair starts to tug her insistently upwards, Laura’s scalp momentarily burning as Laura initially resists. Back on her feet, Laura has just enough time to catch a glimpse of Marin’s face—sweat-damp, the hair around her temples beginning to curl with it—before Marin is pulling her into a wet, open-mouthed kiss, Marin’s hands curving _tight_ around Laura’s jaw. Laura moans as Marin licks her own taste out of Laura’s mouth, secretly pleased when it does _nothing_ to erase the scent of Marin’s slick wetness still covering her chin, and cheeks. 

Pressed as tightly together as they are, Laura can feel Marin’s breasts against her chest again. Bare as they are, now, she can feel Marin’s pebbled _nipples_ against her chest, and she can’t resist: she brings her hands up to cup both, her thumbs finding and then rolling the stiff buds around. Marin’s breath hitches and she jolts, but then her hands are rising, and caging Laura’s wrists, stilling them. 

Laura frowns, pulling back, but as she does Marin moves _forward,_ sliding off the desk and to her feet. She presses her mouth back to Laura’s and drops Laura’s wrists, though Laura can feel her arms moving as she pulls her skirt back down into place so it isn’t so awkwardly bunched up above her waist. But that’s _all_ the warning Laura gets before Marin is suddenly taking another step forward, and spinning them.

Laura’s back hits the edge of Marin’s desk hard enough to rock it back an inch or two, Marin crowding immediately in after her. Laura groans, her hips rocking up against Marin’s, the core of _her_ throbbing and driven all the higher by the way that her face is still covered in Marin’s wetness, the scent of it heady and all-consuming and making Laura feel desperate and _alive_ in a way she hasn’t since she was forced to survive the death of her entire family; her pack; her _world._

She clutches a hand in Marin’s hair, and kisses her harder.

She jolts—rocking the various items on Marin’s desk again—when Main drops her hands to the button and zip of Laura’s jeans, her deft fingers working to get them undone. Laura doesn’t try to help, she knows she’d just get in the way, but she hooks her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and panties and helps shimmy them off once Marin finishes yanking them open. She lets them fall but only manages to step one foot out of them before Marin is pressing a hand between her legs and _dragging_ it upwards, the heel of her hand grinding against Laura’s clit.

“ _Ah,_ ” Laura cries out, her head falling back and one hand desperately flying backwards to brace herself as her hips start to rock against Marin’s hand. Marin keeps up the pressure against her clit but _also_ curls two fingers back, raising them up and then slicking them back through Laura’s folds before _driving_ them inside her. 

Laura very nearly _howls._ She _does_ put four deep scratches into the top of Marin’s desk as her nails transform instantly into claws. “Marin,” she gasps, barely dredging up the concentration to banish the shift. “ _Marin._ ”

Her other hand had been on the back of Marin’s neck; she’d spread her fingers out wide when she felt the shift surging but she now she curls them back around the curve of it, her thumb hooking underneath the hinge of Marin’s jaw and her four fingers curling around the strong line of it. Marin tilts her head back slightly into Laura’s grip and Laura _literally_ sees red, a thin film of it falling over the world as her eyes shift. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, a spiritual sort of _pain_ lancing through her, because the arch of Marin’s throat doesn’t mean—Marin had reminded her that it _can’t_ mean—what Laura wants it to mean. She shoves all of it as far away as she can, inhaling deep to take in another deep drag of Marin’s scent drying all over her face, and lets that fill her lungs, her mind, instead. 

She drops her forehead against Marin’s own when Marin offers it, Marin’s fingers still thrusting in and out of Laura’s core and the heel of her palm still grinding hard and _deliciously_ against Laura’s clit. “Marin,” she gasps out, her hips rocking. 

“It’s okay, Laura,” Marin assures her, her forehead rolling against Laura’s own. “It’s okay, let go. Let _go._ ”

And Laura wants to obey, _needs_ to obey, so she does; she comes. 

Marin keeps her fingers working, the heel of her hand grinding, but she gentles both; prolonging Laura’s orgasm, but making sure to ride the right edge of _too much._ Laura drops her head back and stares at the ceiling as she starts to come down, and then—as the last of the aftershocks are starting to fade from her body, little _zings_ of sensation still occasionally bolting up her spine, curling her toes—she tips it forward instead, and drops it onto Marin’s shoulder.

Marin buries a hand in the hair at the base of Laura’s neck, most of it come loose from Laura’s ponytail, and holds her there.

But this close to Marin’s neck, there’s no escaping it, even with Marin’s release still drying around Laura’s cheeks and chin. Laura squeezes her eyes shut and leans back, the scent of Marin’s new pack once more _cloying_ in her nose, and throat. Marin looks at her, her expression slipping right back into its usual, unreadable mask. Laura stares at her for a second, her jaw working, and then she puts her hands on Marin’s shoulders, and pushes her back a step.

She hops down from Marin’s desk without looking at her, and bends to retrieve her panties, and jeans, so she can yank both roughly back up her legs. 

Still, as much as she wishes she couldn’t see it out of her peripheral vision: she can see Marin above her fixing her bra, buttoning her blouse back up with deft fingers. She tries to keep her eyes on the floor, but that’s not much better: for some reason the sight of Marin’s bare toes against the carpet feels even more strangely intimate than seeing her bare breasts had, than having her _face_ buried between Marin’s legs had. Laura swallows, and glances up, and away. 

She catches sight of the papers she’d dropped—the _evidence_ she’d gathered—scattered all over the floor, and flinches as she bends to gather them up. 

“Laura,” Marin says, as she straightens.

“What,” Laura demands, dull. She still won’t look back at Marin.

Except then she _has_ to, because Marin places a single finger underneath Laura’s chin, and guides Laura’s head up, and around, until she’s looking directly at Marin. Laura’s jaw clenches against Marin’s fingertip. 

Marin isn’t cowed. “Go back to New York,” she says, in that low, _calm_ voice of hers; the one that gives nothing away. “Go back to Derek, and let this mystery lie.” 

Laura _stares_ at her, unable to believe what she’s hearing. “Are you _kidding_ me? You saw that message, you know—”

“What of it?” Marin challenges. “What need it mean to _you?_ ” She searches Laura’s eyes. “You said it yourself: it’s been six years. Whatever game is being played here, whatever battlefield is being prepped, it need not be _your_ fight.”

“This was my _home,_ ” Laura grits out, quiet and bitter and desperate. Her chin is still resting on Marin’s fingertip. She has no idea why she hasn’t moved.

“Yes,” Marin agrees. “It _was._ ”

Laura feels her expression screw up. _Now_ she yanks her face away from Marin’s hand, wheeling away as it feels like some kind of _void_ opens up between her ribs. “You don’t _understand,_ ” Laura half-yells, helpless to control the volume. She whips back around to face Marin. “I can’t just walk away. If I walk away—”

“You get to go back to the life you’ve made,” Marin interrupts, cutting her off. She takes a step forward, back into Laura’s space. For all that they’re both fully dressed again she still _reeks_ of sex, and Laura’s next breath shudders helplessly through her chest. “You get to go back to the life you and _Derek_ have made, and leave this place where it belongs: behind you.”

Laura stops, and searches her face. “You can let it go that easily,” she marvels, meaning: _you can let_ me _go that easily._

Marin’s expression doesn’t change, but her scent does. It dips, just slightly. Still, she answers: “I can accept the things I cannot change.”

And then something miraculous happens: Marin’s expression _does_ change.

“And I am begging you,” she says, her face showing something _raw_ underneath, “to do the same.”

Laura stares at her. Her fingers spasm, and paper crinkles. Laura glances reflexively down at the sheets of paper in her hand. The police report with its picture of the deer with the spiral cut into its side is on top. A message. A declaration. _Revenge._ Laura doesn’t know what it means but she knows that very nearly her entire family burned in this town, and not on accident.

“I can’t,” she says, and only afterwards realizes she’s echoing the same words—the same _refusal_ —that Marin had earlier. _Guess we’re not so different after all,_ Laura thinks, and glances back up at Marin as she helplessly repeats, “I can’t.”

Marin’s expression smooths back out. As it does, her shoulders roll back; she straightens up. She settles her head back on her neck, the angle regal. 

“Then you can’t,” Marin says. 

Laura feels her own expression crumple. She shakes her head, fast and desperate, but the room still smells of her and Marin and _sex,_ and it’s like all of the oxygen in the air has been stripped out: Laura feels like she can’t breathe. She looks at Marin, almost _pleading_ for her to say something else, _anything_ else—something that might convince Laura after all—but Marin just watches her steadily back. 

Laura shakes her head again, and then she turns and slams out of Marin’s office. She starts walking down the hallway towards the high school’s exit, picking up speed as she goes until she _crashes_ through the doors at very nearly a run, and staggers a few steps forward before stumbling to a stop with her hands on her knees. She _gulps_ in the fresh, crisp air, the scent of it helping to clear her lungs and mind and _heart_ some.

She gives herself three more deep, shaky breaths, and then she straightens up. She yanks her hair tie free of her hair and smooths the tangled mess of it back with her hands, before tying it back once more. She scrubs her hands against her face—ignoring how her fingers still smell of Marin—and then she drops them, and starts walking again.

She has wet wipes in her bag in her rental car, parked in the school’s parking lot. She uses them, scrubbing her face and neck and hands and anywhere else she can detect even a _hint_ of Marin’s scent on her skin. 

When she’s done, she tosses the used wipe aside, and glances down at the stack of papers she’d slammed onto the front seat when she’d sat down in the car. The picture of the deer with its spiral carved into its side sits on top, nearly washed-out in the late afternoon sunlight.

Laura starts the car, and points it towards the Preserve. It’s a full moon tonight: she’d spend the night running in the woods of her childhood, and pick the trail back up in the morning. 

That’s her plan, anyway.

“Peter?” She realizes, a few hours later. “What are you doing here?”

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/638442599673462784/matchbook-memories-of-our-childhood-fame-eneiryu)!


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